I was wondering the same thing as I read his piece on trek, when one the most oft cited things you see on things like "trekkies" is the socially progressive and accepting nature of the Trek Universe presenting for many fans a optimistic view of the future.
But then after reading his marriage essay, you quickly realize, progressive and social change are things that OSC is not comfortable with, so then it makes more sense that he was not a fan.
The main component that was a survival trait was blind faith, in obeying the religious leaders commands to go to war a slaughter the enemies of god.
While this is still happening it is to a smaller degree and is no longer a significant driver of survival.
In fact if you look at Religious Driven suicide bombers, they are very often the young and have not yet reproduced. Their shortcut to heaven is an anti-survival trait. Thier religious ferver is removing their genes from the pool.
I don't have the cites, but I have read that there is a genetic component to faith.
And there is definitely a survival benefit, but it is more along the lines of controlling your tribe and convincing them to wipe out your neighbors. AKA Holy War.
If you neighbors had more Athiestic traits, there would probably be less "faith" and more dissent about wiping out your neighbors.
So the religious would likely muster a great force to wipe out the less so.
This is not my theory. It was some documentary I was watching once.
BTW there is no evidence that theist are any more altruistic than non theists. And as far as avoiding punishment. The screaming zealots I see on TV with signs Saying queers will burn in hell, seem to be the ones more into punishment.
Evolution is based on variation/challenge/survival & reproduction:
Variation: successive generations will have differences. Species members of current generation also are variants. This is an observable fact. Is there a Counter argument?
Challenges: Anything that could hamper reproduction. Diminishing food resources, death by predation, environmental stress (toxins, water supply etc). Also observable fact. Is there a counter argument?
Survival & Reproduction: Advantageous genes are passed on selecting this set of genes over those which were not succesful in reproduction. Any counter argument with this?
Frankly the forces at work are so simple basic and obvious, I doubt any rational being with an open mind could deny them.
Evidence: Everywhere, we are creating acellerated evolution all the time when we try to wipe out pests.
We poison rats/roaches and insects that eat our food crops, with a few generations they are immune to out toxins.
We have antibiotics for numerous infectious bacteria, but because we have used them so much the bacteria after many generations are growing immune.
Now I doubt this is because God is saying, "Damn those pesky humans are getting the upper hand on vermin, time to introduce super vermin"? How many really believes this? You may as well say gravity is invisible trolls pulling me to earth with ropes.
It is because of small variations/changes in organisms, and the fact that the survivors had some small advantage that they pass on to the next generation. In a couple of generations of only the strongest resistors producing off-spring, you have an immune population. IOW evolution.
Evolution is happening all around every day. Denying it is lunacy. The principles are simple and easy to see and verify. This is a working force that is nearly unassailable.
Combine this force with the fossil records and you have the most logical explanation for the species that have inhabited this planet.
What amuses me is that arch conservatives are often at the same time dead set against Scientific Evolution, but seemingly love to practice social darwinism.
Slashdotters are definitely interested in Science. This is an important discussion because it is an attempt to subvert science. To undermine the scientific method. The worse part is they are attempting to do this is grade school science class.
"Lower the pay of US professionals to $50,000, Ballmer suggests, and it won't make sense for employers to put up with the hassle of doing business in theThird World. (Kent Hollenback, a spokesman for Microsoft, declined to say what the company pays employees.) "
CS Grad working more than a decade. In the beginning it was normal. Tt was a good intersting work with reasonable pay. Then it got crazy, bubble economics kicked in. Good times for a while, but it was nutso. Then we hit the bust. Now it sucks IMO at least in big Corporations. Downsized to less than half staff, Still expected to meet crazy deadline, but now the management solution is egregious stupid process. The Job sucks. I hear the same from all my friends at other big corps.
Once upon a time we used to work long hours on interesting problems, becaus they were interesting problems, now we do it to keep our jobs. We have massive outsourcing contract in India and China, which are poorly managed. Not poor talent mind you . The guys come over for training locally and they are bright and motived. But out of sync time zones and communications barriers, mean we get less productivity in the end. But we do it cause it looks good to someones bottom line.
So I don't recomend anyone enter this field, where flex time means freedom to work all hours to meet crazy deadlines, were process has removed coding excitement, and turned it into accounting drudgery(with no gain in quality).
But if you are a good natural talent and have a passion for coding/creating buy all means enter the field. But work only for small companies/startups or do your own thing. Try to double major in Heavy Math/Engineering/Biology or anything that will open other alternatives than just being a software engineer. Or maybe just do the Biology study and do Open source stuff on the side.
I am still coding for a living, but it is no longer fun. I think daily about what I could do instead.
Its not like they can just reverse engineer it. I mean being the good law abiding folks that they are, Adobe would have to turn themselves in for a DMCA Violation. I mean they wouldn't want to exhibit a double standard or anything.
For the record this has already been reverse engineered by freeware code in dcraw (Long live Dave Coffin).
Ok I am a scifi geek. I will watch almost any scifi show. But Enterprise went out to luch basing the whole series on time travel crap. They may as well have written the whole story inside a holodeck, that other device you use when you can't come up with a story.
The current season is exactly what trek fans want, a look at the old races and rivalries, how they got to the point of being in TOS timeline. Mind you they have lost 80% of the audience after 3 seasons of drek.
But since they were killing it maybe it would have been better if season 4 was more of the same drek, because then I could have gleefully danced on its corpse. Now I just say damn this is what they could have did.
This is not a contradiction, since most porn downloaded is probably copyright violation as well.
Frankly I don't know anyone with broadband who doesn't download copyright material in some form, and if it was stopped outright, I think most of us would get dialup for basic surfing and email. I know I would.
So if you can't download anymore copyright violating: Games Music TV Shows (my main DL) Movies Books Comics Apps Porn Then what is your big bandwidth sink?
Espionage is when Huawei steals Cisco source and uses it in its own routers.
Leaking a press release early is just more press. It is a farce and I would boycott apple if I was actually in the habit of buying their products in the first place.
Geez if people actually believed this strip I would think it would make them want to play more DnD. DnD as training to be a real witch and get magic powers. Sign me up!. Scary last frame with the "good guys" at the bonfire.
I miss playing AD&D. I would still play if life didn't get in the way. Have to settle for the occaisional CRPG binge now and then.
My experience is no knock against iPods, it relates why I won't buy another player without easy drag and drop. This article was about Sony and I suspect the Sony sw is not as good as Itunes. There is also platform support. Drag n Drop works everywhere.
Also I don't care about playlists, I alway put my player on shuffle. I think some company out there is even marketing a player with that in mind.:-)
What is uncomfortable is that after the last install, I haven't found the lame software disk I need in order to transfer music to my player.
Hence I can't update it. I dont' know where the frelling disk is. So yes I am hostage to the craptacular software that came with my RCA piece of frelling crap. When I did have the software it had no playlist management, just first come first serve. So I need to find some damn proprietary disk so I just do a glorified drag n drop.
You think a drag and drop player would take half an hour to re-index itself? And you say I am being silly.
There are drag n drop players like the Sandisk and Muvo that work just fine without any crap software and that is what I will definitely purchase next.
I have and RCA and I hate it. I have to use musicmatch to load the songs. It is a steaming pile of dung. Now if I ever was dumb enough to buy a player that forced me to use software to load the tunes, itunes is probably better than just about all the rest.
But really, I will not buy another player that forces me down that route.
Nice that it works for you, but not everyone is comfortable being forced to use software just to put music on their walkman. Heck I might even use it if provided and it turns out to be worth it.
But if I Reinstall my computer and I have to find lame software to put music on my player. No thanks, I won't be held hostage again, no matter how good the software is.
What is the freakin harm in letting me simply drop my music on the player as an option???
Every MP3 CD player works with mp3 disks as they are made in computers,not transferred onto the device itself. You need your disks to interoperate with your portable, your car MP3 etc...
But We all had this discussion about the ipod shuffle. It works as a mass storage device for things other than music. For music transfers you require Itunes. This method is actually the industry standard.
Notable exceptions are the Muvo and Sandisk players, but my own RCA K@zoo has crappy SW only transfer. A mistake I will never make again.
The best way to rid ourselves of this stupidity is to buy players that work as mass storage device/players, and tell your non-techy friends.
A plastic box the size of the Mini to inspire partners. Heck it is not even a prototype, just a plastic mock up.
Intel would be a lot more inspirational if they showed up with a circuit board prototype for a small form factor that comes in with a reasonable dollar cost and heat envelope.
A hunk of plastic when intel doesn't really offer a solution that fits in the plastic seems kind of pointless. Does intel offer any explanation of What processor/chipset would power their partners? A prescot would melt anything that size unless that was the heatsink.
Only really leaves Dothan solutions, which intel doesn't really sanction or price for desktop usage.
The only PC form factors close to this are micro-itx (non intel but shipping/working) and nano-itx (also non intel and maybe non shipping).
Maybe Intel is inspiring it's partners to think about using Via Epia solutions.
Microsoft sucks. Mainly on the basis of being a predatory monopoly. But that is a whole other article
But windows is not that bad, not the best, but not as bad as the article paints it.
While the article attempts to make light of it, the fact remains that being the dominant player attracts the most Malware, Virii, spyware etc...
But you can avoid problems by staying away from the pillars of the monoculture:
Use Firefox instead of IE, Use Thunderbird instead of Outlook, Use Open Office instead of MS office, Use Media Player Classic instead of MS WMP 10.0. Use some other chat instead of MSN (I use Miranda and Yahoo).
90% of your problems are now gone. Everything is free. You are now mostly divorced from the monoculture. There is one last piece of the puzzle:
Personal Firewal. I use Sygate Personal.
You are now at 95%.
That last 5% relies on being careful. At this point the crap you get will most likely be installed by yourself.
That is why I always look for opens source programs first. To me nothing says secure and safe like open source.
When I get beyond open source, google is my last line of defence:
Do a google on "divx spyware" and this...
Do all of the above and you should be pretty safe. I surf lots, Download all kinds of programs/ media etc and my system is clean whenever I check it.
A couple of years ago I did nothing till I got a few viruses, then I wised up. Clean sailing since then.
I never got into firefly when it was on, but after a run through the box set in proper order, I must say it was shiny.:-) Looking forward to the movie. Farscape was a blast.
I hated enterprise from the beginning. Stupid time travel this and time travel that. I don't mind one wierd fluke time travel episode, but they couldn't come up with an idea that didn't involve time travel. One other thought, do prequels always suck?
Slashdot Mirror
I was wondering the same thing as I read his piece on trek, when one the most oft cited things you see on things like "trekkies" is the socially progressive and accepting nature of the Trek Universe presenting for many fans a optimistic view of the future.
But then after reading his marriage essay, you quickly realize, progressive and social change are things that OSC is not comfortable with, so then it makes more sense that he was not a fan.
He sounds like an neo-con. Sounds like outlawing divorce is next on his list. 3 more republican administrations and the USA should be ready for that.
"Marriage Is Everybody's Business.
And it isn't just the damage that divorce and out-of-wedlock births do to the children in those broken families: Your divorce hurts my kids, too. "
The main component that was a survival trait was blind faith, in obeying the religious leaders commands to go to war a slaughter the enemies of god.
While this is still happening it is to a smaller degree and is no longer a significant driver of survival.
In fact if you look at Religious Driven suicide bombers, they are very often the young and have not yet reproduced. Their shortcut to heaven is an anti-survival trait. Thier religious ferver is removing their genes from the pool.
I don't have the cites, but I have read that there is a genetic component to faith.
And there is definitely a survival benefit, but it is more along the lines of controlling your tribe and convincing them to wipe out your neighbors. AKA Holy War.
If you neighbors had more Athiestic traits, there would probably be less "faith" and more dissent about wiping out your neighbors.
So the religious would likely muster a great force to wipe out the less so.
This is not my theory. It was some documentary I was watching once.
BTW there is no evidence that theist are any more altruistic than non theists. And as far as avoiding punishment. The screaming zealots I see on TV with signs Saying queers will burn in hell, seem to be the ones more into punishment.
"We must remember that Darwins theory is just that, AN UNPROVEN THEORY"
How do you think we got the modern crop of super bacteria resistant to our anti-biotics? Super bugs as they are called in the media.
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/64/72307.htm
Evolution is based on variation/challenge/survival & reproduction:
Variation: successive generations will have differences. Species members of current generation also are variants. This is an observable fact. Is there a Counter argument?
Challenges: Anything that could hamper reproduction. Diminishing food resources, death by predation, environmental stress (toxins, water supply etc). Also observable fact. Is there a counter argument?
Survival & Reproduction: Advantageous genes are passed on selecting this set of genes over those which were not succesful in reproduction. Any counter argument with this?
Frankly the forces at work are so simple basic and obvious, I doubt any rational being with an open mind could deny them.
Evidence: Everywhere, we are creating acellerated evolution all the time when we try to wipe out pests.
We poison rats/roaches and insects that eat our food crops, with a few generations they are immune to out toxins.
We have antibiotics for numerous infectious bacteria, but because we have used them so much the bacteria after many generations are growing immune.
Now I doubt this is because God is saying, "Damn those pesky humans are getting the upper hand on vermin, time to introduce super vermin"? How many really believes this? You may as well say gravity is invisible trolls pulling me to earth with ropes.
It is because of small variations/changes in organisms, and the fact that the survivors had some small advantage that they pass on to the next generation. In a couple of generations of only the strongest resistors producing off-spring, you have an immune population. IOW evolution.
Evolution is happening all around every day. Denying it is lunacy. The principles are simple and easy to see and verify. This is a working force that is nearly unassailable.
Combine this force with the fossil records and you have the most logical explanation for the species that have inhabited this planet.
What amuses me is that arch conservatives are often at the same time dead set against Scientific Evolution, but seemingly love to practice social darwinism.
Slashdotters are definitely interested in Science. This is an important discussion because it is an attempt to subvert science. To undermine the scientific method. The worse part is they are attempting to do this is grade school science class.
"Lower the pay of US professionals to $50,000, Ballmer suggests, and it won't make sense for employers to put up with the hassle of doing business in theThird World. (Kent Hollenback, a spokesman for Microsoft, declined to say what the company pays employees.) "
o ry445480235.asp
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/12/28/st
Why are we posting this again?
Encryption here is very light, already broken coded and being used by other converters. There is no case whatsover that can be brought.
Only Adobe's DMCA happy lawyers could possible see a case here.
Adobe want to be the defacto RAW converter, and to make their life easier they want all manufacturers to convert to Adobe's own DNG format.
So I think we can expect more of this whining to come.
CS Grad working more than a decade. In the beginning it was normal. Tt was a good intersting work with reasonable pay. Then it got crazy, bubble economics kicked in. Good times for a while, but it was nutso. Then we hit the bust. Now it sucks IMO at least in big Corporations. Downsized to less than half staff, Still expected to meet crazy deadline, but now the management solution is egregious stupid process. The Job sucks. I hear the same from all my friends at other big corps.
Once upon a time we used to work long hours on interesting problems, becaus they were interesting problems, now we do it to keep our jobs. We have massive outsourcing contract in India and China, which are poorly managed. Not poor talent mind you . The guys come over for training locally and they are bright and motived. But out of sync time zones and communications barriers, mean we get less productivity in the end. But we do it cause it looks good to someones bottom line.
So I don't recomend anyone enter this field, where flex time means freedom to work all hours to meet crazy deadlines, were process has removed coding excitement, and turned it into accounting drudgery(with no gain in quality).
But if you are a good natural talent and have a passion for coding/creating buy all means enter the field. But work only for small companies/startups or do your own thing. Try to double major in Heavy Math/Engineering/Biology or anything that will open other alternatives than just being a software engineer. Or maybe just do the Biology study and do Open source stuff on the side.
I am still coding for a living, but it is no longer fun. I think daily about what I could do instead.
Its not like they can just reverse engineer it. I mean being the good law abiding folks that they are, Adobe would have to turn themselves in for a DMCA Violation. I mean they wouldn't want to exhibit a double standard or anything.
For the record this has already been reverse engineered by freeware code in dcraw (Long live Dave Coffin).
Ok I am a scifi geek. I will watch almost any scifi show. But Enterprise went out to luch basing the whole series on time travel crap. They may as well have written the whole story inside a holodeck, that other device you use when you can't come up with a story.
The current season is exactly what trek fans want, a look at the old races and rivalries, how they got to the point of being in TOS timeline. Mind you they have lost 80% of the audience after 3 seasons of drek.
But since they were killing it maybe it would have been better if season 4 was more of the same drek, because then I could have gleefully danced on its corpse. Now I just say damn this is what they could have did.
Freaking Morons.
This is not a contradiction, since most porn downloaded is probably copyright violation as well.
Frankly I don't know anyone with broadband who doesn't download copyright material in some form, and if it was stopped outright, I think most of us would get dialup for basic surfing and email. I know I would.
So if you can't download anymore copyright violating:
Games
Music
TV Shows (my main DL)
Movies
Books
Comics
Apps
Porn
Then what is your big bandwidth sink?
Espionage is when Huawei steals Cisco source and uses it in its own routers.
Leaking a press release early is just more press. It is a farce and I would boycott apple if I was actually in the habit of buying their products in the first place.
Geez if people actually believed this strip I would think it would make them want to play more DnD. DnD as training to be a real witch and get magic powers. Sign me up!. Scary last frame with the "good guys" at the bonfire.
I miss playing AD&D. I would still play if life didn't get in the way. Have to settle for the occaisional CRPG binge now and then.
My experience is no knock against iPods, it relates why I won't buy another player without easy drag and drop. This article was about Sony and I suspect the Sony sw is not as good as Itunes. There is also platform support. Drag n Drop works everywhere.
:-)
Also I don't care about playlists, I alway put my player on shuffle. I think some company out there is even marketing a player with that in mind.
I have an older model, A K@zoo. Require SW. Good to hear they fixed that.
What is uncomfortable is that after the last install, I haven't found the lame software disk I need in order to transfer music to my player.
Hence I can't update it. I dont' know where the frelling disk is. So yes I am hostage to the craptacular software that came with my RCA piece of frelling crap. When I did have the software it had no playlist management, just first come first serve. So I need to find some damn proprietary disk so I just do a glorified drag n drop.
You think a drag and drop player would take half an hour to re-index itself? And you say I am being silly.
There are drag n drop players like the Sandisk and Muvo that work just fine without any crap software and that is what I will definitely purchase next.
I have and RCA and I hate it. I have to use musicmatch to load the songs. It is a steaming pile of dung. Now if I ever was dumb enough to buy a player that forced me to use software to load the tunes, itunes is probably better than just about all the rest.
But really, I will not buy another player that forces me down that route.
Get a Sandisk and use true drag and drop.
Nice that it works for you, but not everyone is comfortable being forced to use software just to put music on their walkman. Heck I might even use it if provided and it turns out to be worth it.
But if I Reinstall my computer and I have to find lame software to put music on my player. No thanks, I won't be held hostage again, no matter how good the software is.
What is the freakin harm in letting me simply drop my music on the player as an option???
Every MP3 CD player works with mp3 disks as they are made in computers,not transferred onto the device itself. You need your disks to interoperate with your portable, your car MP3 etc...
But We all had this discussion about the ipod shuffle. It works as a mass storage device for things other than music. For music transfers you require Itunes. This method is actually the industry standard.
Notable exceptions are the Muvo and Sandisk players, but my own RCA K@zoo has crappy SW only transfer. A mistake I will never make again.
The best way to rid ourselves of this stupidity is to buy players that work as mass storage device/players, and tell your non-techy friends.
Boo Apple, Boo Sony...
Yay Sandisk.
Unless it just plugs as a storage device to drag and drop on any computer without software it is out, out, out....
Mind you the various Ipods are in the same boat.
I believe Sandisk has proper drag, drop n play operation on any platform.
A plastic box the size of the Mini to inspire partners. Heck it is not even a prototype, just a plastic mock up.
Intel would be a lot more inspirational if they showed up with a circuit board prototype for a small form factor that comes in with a reasonable dollar cost and heat envelope.
A hunk of plastic when intel doesn't really offer a solution that fits in the plastic seems kind of pointless. Does intel offer any explanation of What processor/chipset would power their partners? A prescot would melt anything that size unless that was the heatsink.
Only really leaves Dothan solutions, which intel doesn't really sanction or price for desktop usage.
The only PC form factors close to this are micro-itx (non intel but shipping/working) and nano-itx (also non intel and maybe non shipping).
Maybe Intel is inspiring it's partners to think about using Via Epia solutions.
Hey it's not April 1 yet. This is nuts.
Did you check how the will administer the tax. At the gas pump.
So Put 10 Gallons in your Prius: $50. While the guy in the Hummer next to you laughs his ass off while his 10 Gallons cost $20.
Talk about killing hybrids dead. Who is sponsoring this idea; GM and Ford?
This would be so wrong in so many ways....
Microsoft sucks. Mainly on the basis of being a predatory monopoly. But that is a whole other article
But windows is not that bad, not the best, but not as bad as the article paints it.
While the article attempts to make light of it, the fact remains that being the dominant player attracts the most Malware, Virii, spyware etc...
But you can avoid problems by staying away from the pillars of the monoculture:
Use Firefox instead of IE,
Use Thunderbird instead of Outlook,
Use Open Office instead of MS office,
Use Media Player Classic instead of MS WMP 10.0.
Use some other chat instead of MSN (I use Miranda and Yahoo).
90% of your problems are now gone. Everything is free. You are now mostly divorced from the monoculture. There is one last piece of the puzzle:
Personal Firewal. I use Sygate Personal.
You are now at 95%.
That last 5% relies on being careful. At this point the crap you get will most likely be installed by yourself.
That is why I always look for opens source programs first. To me nothing says secure and safe like open source.
When I get beyond open source, google is my last line of defence:
Do a google on "divx spyware" and this...
Do all of the above and you should be pretty safe. I surf lots, Download all kinds of programs/ media etc and my system is clean whenever I check it.
A couple of years ago I did nothing till I got a few viruses, then I wised up. Clean sailing since then.
Both much better.
:-) Looking forward to the movie.
I never got into firefly when it was on, but after a run through the box set in proper order, I must say it was shiny.
Farscape was a blast.
I hated enterprise from the beginning. Stupid time travel this and time travel that. I don't mind one wierd fluke time travel episode, but they couldn't come up with an idea that didn't involve time travel. One other thought, do prequels always suck?